


In Love and War

by Houseofmalfoy



Series: Destroy me, but don't let me go: A Sirius and Narcissa AU [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Black Family Drama (Harry Potter), Black Family-centric (Harry Potter), Blackcest (Harry Potter), Cousin Incest, F/M, Narcissa Black Malfoy-centric, Young Sirius Black
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25113760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Houseofmalfoy/pseuds/Houseofmalfoy
Summary: Breaking things off isn't quite as easy as they'd have you believe...
Relationships: Sirius Black/Narcissa Black Malfoy
Series: Destroy me, but don't let me go: A Sirius and Narcissa AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2193864
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	In Love and War

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Hogwartsonline's OWLs for the dialogue prompt "We're not working out."

“It’s not working out. We’re not working out.”

Narcissa’s words sounded heavy through the quiet flat, breaking the silence that had uncomfortably hung around them since they’d stopped yelling at one another. She didn’t look up at Sirius, didn’t need to to know that he wasn’t looking at her either, and from the moment the words — nothing but the truth — left her lips she wished she could take them back. 

She knew she was right though. A year and a half they had been attempting to work this out; a year and a half since she had followed in Sirius’ and her sister’s footsteps and had left pureblood society behind to never look back, a year and a half since she and Sirius had decided that meant they could be together, properly this time. 

From the very beginning his friends — today they were Narcissa’s friends too, but she could never help but refer to James, Lily, Marlene, and the others as Sirius’ friends alone — had told them they were being reckless; had told them they were setting themselves up to fall apart together. Narcissa knew they had been right from that first day onward, but neither Sirius nor she had ever been willing to admit to that truth. 

_ We’re not working out.  _ Narcissa had blurted the statement out without meaning to despite meaning the words themselves and she couldn’t help but wonder if this was the end. She didn’t know if she wanted it to be, didn’t know what she would ever do with or without Sirius in her life in the way he had been for years. 

From the moment they’d started this, back when they were fifteen years old with neither an ounce of common sense nor a shred of hope for a future together, they’d always been meant to blow up. Narcissa knew this, Sirius knew this too, and it had never held them back from being stupid enough to continue. 

As soon as she’d left their old society behind, they’d both been naive or desperate or lonely enough to forget all the other reasons why they would never have worked out. Sirius gave her stability, a place to call home, and something to hold onto when she felt like she had made the biggest mistake of her life in turning her back on their family. 

He also gave her something to hurt, to scream at until both their throats were sore, to blame when everything became too much. 

Over the past year and a half, their relationship had known so many lows and highs that Narcissa had become used to living in a constant state of turmoil. 

Sirius and she cherished the days where he took her to see a muggle film; when they spent a whole day in bed: making love while listening to the record player he was so proud of; when she watched him work on that motorbike of his for hours until she had him shagging her up against the wall. 

Less cherished but equally frequent, perhaps even more so than the good days, were the times where there were broken fire whiskey bottles on the living room floor; shattered glass and stains against the walls and tears in both their eyes as they screamed as though their lives depended on it; the days where they blamed one another for everything wrong between them, for everything wrong in the world, and for everything wrong within themselves. 

There were arguments that got so out of hand that they resulted in Sirius leaving to go to stay with Remus and Peter for a few days, arguments that had her consider owling the Lestrange brothers in an attempt to gain back a place in High Society. There were also fights that resulted in sex so angry and so rough that they’d be scarred and bruised for days but satisfied for a far shorter amount of time. 

Narcissa couldn’t recall ever having a fight with Sirius that resulted in this. 

They’d gone too far, as they so often did. Tonight though, instead of Narcissa’s jibe at Sirius’ uncanny resemblance to Walburga Black being met with one of her favourite vases thrown at the wall, and instead of Sirius’ insinuation that she’d only ran off because no one else would have her being met with more screams and a touch of accidental magic, they’d shut each other up. 

When she did look up at Sirius, she was surprised to find him staring at her. “Forget I said anything,” Narcissa told him, and she rolled her eyes when he scoffed at her. She watched him as he walked closer to her, but any fire that had been there during their previous argument had been put out. His eyes were the colour of the ashes that remained after the flames had died. 

“Why?”

“For once in your life can you just do as you’re told?”

Sirius rolled his eyes, and though she’d have expected his fire to return at her annoyance his eyes remained ash-grey and empty when they looked back at her. “You’re honest with yourself for what’s gotta be the first time ever, and you just expect me to forget it like that?”

Perhaps it was meant to be a joke, perhaps it was meant to be hurtful, but to Narcissa he merely sounded tired. She couldn’t blame him; she was too. 

That didn’t mean hearing Sirius tell her she was right about the state of their relationship was any easier. Narcissa would have preferred if he’d ignored her, if he’d argued her on it; if they’d been able to go back exactly to what they’d been doing fifteen minutes ago and try to tear one another apart. 

Instead, she bit her lip when he approached the sofa she’d sat down on and looked away from him again when he tried to touch her cheek; there was a small bruise forming from his magic earlier. Sirius sat beside her, and if she’d looked at him she’d seen the uncertainty in thunderstorm-grey eyes just as clearly as she felt the fear racing through her own veins. 

“We were never gonna work out were we?” Sirius asked, and Narcissa didn’t know how truthful he wanted her to be; didn’t know how honest she wanted herself to be either. 

_ No, we were never going to work out,  _ she should say, if she were to tell him the truth they both already knew. They had never stood a chance, it felt like. There was too much history between them, Narcissa figured; too much shared but painstakingly unresolved family trauma, too much anger and regret and instability that was wrecking them both while providing them with just enough promises of safety and a better tomorrow to make it work. 

To make it work, until it was time to acknowledge it did not.

“We were not,” Narcissa answered quietly, and when she turned back to Sirius her gaze fixated on his pierced ear. He’d gotten it in their sixth year, and she was certain everyone in the Great Hall could still remember Walburga Black’s howler to this day after he had sent her a photograph. She’d thought him ridiculous over it at the time; over the years she’d grown to consider it a rather attractive feat of his. 

Neither of them said anything for a moment, the weight of a mutual admission to the failure of their relationship that they both should have seen coming feeling heavy around them, suffocating the pair of them as neither Sirius nor Narcissa knew how to move forward. 

“So… ” Sirius began, then stopped when it became apparent he had no idea what he actually wanted to say.

“So?”

Sirius reached out to her, loosely wrapping his arm around her waist and though Narcissa considered moving away from him for a split second, she leaned in. She always did, did she not? But she supposed that he did, as well. They’d never quite been able to pull away from one another when it should have been clear that was the right call; Narcissa didn’t know why she had expected this to be any different now.

“I don’t know if I can handle losing you,” Sirius muttered, and his hand at the dip of her waist pulled her closer. She didn’t fight it. “On top of everything else… I can’t lose you too.”

_ You too.  _

_ Too, _ because Benjy Fenwick had been murdered only weeks ago in a way Narcissa found too gruesome to describe; because Dorcas Meadowes had already been killed by Voldemort himself; because even the Prewett twins’ strength hadn’t been a match for five death eaters; because all around them people were disappearing, dying, murdering, and mourning.  _ I can’t lose you too. _

Narcissa had to agree with the sentiment; she too didn’t know how she would handle losing Sirius as well in the middle of all this loss. 

Sirius was  _ home _ . Given her history in the Black family she figured that that statement alone was enough of a dead give away that that didn’t mean he was good for her, nor she for him. 

He’d been a safe haven the moment she had left their old society behind, a constant in her life when everything else had been a whirlwind of change and doubt and judgement she hadn’t known how to handle. Sirius had been stability in the most unstable of ways and an unpredictability she had grown to expect and adore. 

Sirius, and perhaps with that too her relationship with him, was to her like the edge between the eye of the hurricane and the storm itself. He gave her calmth and safety and belonging in the middle of a war so devastating Narcissa had no words for it, security in the midst of living in a constant state of lethal danger. Simultaneously, Sirius was as unpredictable and destructive as the war itself. 

The warped sense of stability they had found in each other years back was every bit as stable as the Black family had always been: always mere seconds away from trading the eye of a hurricane for the heat of the storm, always a little too close to erupting in arguments that shattered boarded up windows and destroyed any false idea of peace they’d led themselves to believe they had. 

They blamed it on the war, most of the time. 

“I’m quite sure I can’t, either,” Narcissa whispered, and deep down she already knows where this is heading and she is already well aware that it’s not the end of a relationship she might have expected when she’d blurted out her initial words. This isn’t working out. She didn’t know why she’d been naive enough to think that would change anything.

“The war’s bad enough as is, huh?” Sirius muttered, a hint of defeat in his voice when he chuckled bitterly, leaning closer to her as he brushed his lips against her hairline. There was irony in this war being both the reason their relationship was as unstable as it was, and the reason they failed to get out of it. Narcissa chose to ignore that irony. 

She tilted her head to meet eyes that she’d been drowning in since they were both fifteen, so familiar it was no wonder she couldn’t look away for too long. “So what?” Narcissa asked, resting her hand just behind his neck so her fingers dug into his black curls; familiar, home. “Wait out the war? You can’t be-” at the glittering of his eyes she held back the word  _ serious _ . 

It sounded ridiculous to her. She supposed anything to do with Sirius Orion Black had sounded ridiculous to her at one point or another during the span of their relationship. He’d been ridiculous when he’d been so eager to rebel at twelve, ridiculous when he’d attended family gatherings dressed in gryffindor scarves, ridiculous when she’d never been able to resist him from the moment his lips first touched hers. 

_ What was a little more of it? _

Sirius kissed her instead of answering. That too was not entirely unexpected. They’d always been predictably destructive, Narcissa thought, when she kissed him back without a shiver of doubt. 


End file.
